Stranger in a Strange land

Jonathan has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(jcwren) Re: Stranger in a Strange land by jcwren (Prior) on Jun 06, 2000 at 18:47 UTC
There is a CPAN module by John McNamara called SpreadSheet::Excel. It only allows inserting text and numbers into cells (i.e. no formatting, no formulas, etc, etc). I have a large database on a Linux box that has to be able to download Excel spreadsheets containing the data. I'm lucky in that I don't have to do anything other than just numbers and text with this. However, I'd love to have a full-blown module that would allow cell formatting, fomulas, the works. I've thought about writing one, but everyting I think about starting I get put off by the fact that it's a Microsoft product, and the docs for the Excel format are ambigious. Maybe John's module will do all you need, however... --Chris	[reply]
OLE IDispatch access with Perl by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 06, 2000 at 17:36 UTC
I haven't done it myself, but the Win32::Ole documentation looks quite simple (simple of course, if you know the Excel "object model")... The MSDN has some documentation on the Excel object model, as has the Office Development Kit, something you might want to buy if you do Office development on a regular basis... Some code from the top of my head - I haven't done Excel automation for a looong time ... Note that you can take the method and object names from any VB code, as both Perl and VB call through the IDispatch methods of Excel. `$ex = Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application') or die "oops\n"; $ex->Worksheets(0)->Cells(0,0) = "Hello world";` [download] I'm not sure about the parameters you have to pass to the `Cells` function - some VB sample code should be easy to port though.	[reply] [d/l]
RE: OLE IDispatch access with Perl by Jonathan (Curate) on Jun 06, 2000 at 18:39 UTC
Thanks for that, Simple things do appear fairly straight forward, guess I'll have to bite the bullet and take on the Excel object model.	[reply]
A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
Re: Stranger in a Strange land by t0mas (Priest) on Jun 07, 2000 at 10:44 UTC
Maybe this previous discussion will help you. Use the simple OLE examples and the VB object browser and you will quickly get the hang of it... /brother t0mas	[reply]